This course fulfills requirements for the following specialization(s):

Public Management and Leadership

Description: The central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, is the most powerful peacetime bureaucracy in the federal government. Its actions affect the economic well being of United States residents and people around the world. Yet, few know much about what it does. What they do know is often wrong. What powers does this central bank have? How is the United States money supply created and how are interest rates managed by the Federal Reserve? How, why and under what authority does the Federal Reserve appropriate loans to foreign countries bypassing the United States Congress? How has the Federal Reserve met its responsibilities to reduce gender and racial bias in bank lending? How did the Federal Reserve manage its fleet of 500-plus airplanes that delivered paper checks across the country every weekday night? What happened to the transcripts of its meetings that it kept secret for seventeen years and why did it shred its records in the 1990?s? How is the Federal Reserve connected to the banks it regulates? How has Congress carried out its oversight responsibilities of this powerful government bureaucracy?

Professor Auerbach has authored a forthcoming book on central banking and congressional investigations. He was an economist with the United States House of Representatives Financial Services Committee for eleven years. He assisted four Committee Chairman in Congressional investigations of the Federal Reserve and other oversight and hearing functions during the tenure of four Federal Reserve Chairmen: Arthur Burns, William Miller, Paul Volcker, and Alan Greenspan. Auerbach also served as an economist in the U.S. Treasury's Office of Domestic Monetary Affairs during the first year of the Ronald Reagan administration and as a financial economist with the Federal Reserve System. He has been a professor of economics at the American University in Washington, D.C. and a professor of economics and finance at the University of California-Riverside. He has written numerous articles, and two textbooks in banking and financial markets.